Yikes!

She isn't real, but that's beside the point. Her
experiences are ones all homebased entrepreneurs can relate to. She
agonizes over what to charge clients. She copes with a dog who
barks incessantly during business calls. She struggles to ignore
the siren's cry of her all-too-tempting refrigerator. The fact
that she's a comic-strip character--and a beloved one at
that--is purely incidental. Welcome to the world of America's
newest homebased business owner: Cathy.

"It just seemed like a good time for Cathy to enter this
world," says comic-strip creator Cathy Guisewite of her
character's recent shift to the home front. "I had never
before explored the working-at-home concept in the comic strip--and
it really is rich territory. Plus, a lot more people are [working
at home] than when I started the strip."

As any die-hard Cathy fan will tell you, the strip that's
lasted more than two decades chronicles the life and times of the
quintessential single career woman (a comic-strip updating of
television's Mary Richards, if you will). With her corporate
job a casualty of downsizing, however, Cathy decided this summer to
take the road increasingly more traveled and start her own
homebased business. Why make such a move--and, more significantly,
what will result? Will Cathy's entrepreneurial foray be a
lasting one? Will she enjoy being her own boss? And will she
succeed in tuning out the distracting sounds of dog and
refrigerator alike? To get the answers to these questions, we
naturally turned to Guisewite--a former homebased entrepreneur
herself. What follows is a peek into the wacky and wonderful world
of Guisewite's comic-strip offspring.

Picture This

First, you're probably wondering what type of business Cathy
started. Well, keep wondering. "I've always left
[Cathy's profession] vague in the comic strip," says
Guisewite. "The company where she used to work was called
Product Testing Inc. I kind of imagined it to be a marketing
company. [Cathy] was in the lower rung of management at that
company--which just meant a lot more work and a better business
card."

Why not be more specific? Guisewite says she strives to make
Cathy a character that's easy to relate to by a mass audience.
"In the comic strip, we've always just seen her with big
deadlines, lots of meetings, lots of memos, lots of crises, lots of
emergencies--of a general sort. And I did that to keep [the strip]
as universal as possible."

If you insist on filling in as many blanks as possible, put
Cathy down as a consultant of some sort. "Her plan,"
offers Guisewite, "is to run her own business comprised of
freelance clients. When she left the company where she had been
working, it was with the idea that it would be a regular source of
freelance work for her. We'll see how that
[develops]."

Love At First Bite

So far, however, what Cathy has developed during her homebased
business journey isn't something she necessarily wished for--a
mad crush on her refrigerator. "The refrigerator is right
there calling your name all day long," Guisewite observes,
"and there are no witnesses." Consider it a case of the
what-no-one-sees-can't-hurt-me,
isn't-there-some-chocolate-cake-left-in-the-refrigerator blues:
"There's something about being home that gives you a
license to nibble and interrupt yourself to get a snack. It's
that comfy, homey feeling that encourages you to eat in a way I
don't think you do when you're in an office."

Not that a lack of witnesses is the only force sucking Cathy
into a vortex of constant snacking. As Guisewite herself learned
from 14 years of working at home, being able to wear whatever you
want in your homebased office has its caloric drawbacks, too.
"In my own experience, that means I'd wear sweatsuits two
weeks in a row and then not be able to get into anything else
because I'd lulled myself into a false sense of security,"
the comic-strip author jokingly divulges. "You get that [false
sense of security] when you eat all day long and you're wearing
clothes with stretchy waistbands."

As if that weren't enough stress for a fledgling homebased
business owner, Cathy must also cope with the ever-perplexing
dilemma of what to charge her clients. "It took her longer to
figure out how to bill somebody than to do the actual work,"
says Guisewite. "When I used to do freelance advertising, I
always faced that problem of not knowing how to bill somebody. Do
you bill for the five hours you sat there staring at the page when
you really didn't have an idea? Or do you bill for the 14
seconds you're brushing your teeth [when inspiration
strikes and you suddenly think of] the big idea that the whole
thing is based on?" Yikes!

Reality Check

As you've undoubtedly surmised by now, many of the
experiences the fictional Cathy will encounter in her tenure
as a homebased entrepreneur will be drawn from the
experiences of the real-life Cathy Guisewite. Although
she has since opted to produce her comic strip outside her home,
Guisewite has plenty of firsthand working-at-home recollections to
call upon. And who's to say, really, that an awful lot of truth
can't be injected into the panels of a comic strip?

"The strip is a great vehicle for showing the reality vs.
the fantasy of a situation," says Guisewite. In her own
experience, for instance, running a homebased enterprise while
raising a child wasn't all that easy. "I'm sure some
[homebased entrepreneurs] are able to pull that off
beautifully," she concedes. "And I definitely had the
fantasy that [my daughter] would be playing at my side while I
worked. But, in reality, I have to drive to a different zip code to
even be able to think about work."

Although comic-strip Cathy doesn't have a child, Guisewite
still made use of her experience by forcing Cathy to grapple with
the presence of a hovering mother in her home. And, yes, her dog
Electra has a way of clamoring for Cathy's attention as well.
"People who aren't working at home have very little
sympathy for [all the difficulties that arise]," says
Guisewite, "because they're not living it."

What Happens Next?

Fortunately, not everything will be difficult in the homebased
world of Cathy. "I want her to experience the
exhilaration," says Guisewite. "It's a wonderful
feeling to actually be on your own, make enough money to support
yourself and keep things going. It's also isolating, though. If
you're a single person working at home, your chances for human
contact get smaller and smaller and smaller."

Ah, but we suspect Cathy will muddle through just fine, and
certainly with great humor. What we're really wondering--and
we're guessing you are, too--is exactly how long Cathy will
remain a homebased entrepreneur. Will she eventually return to her
former life as a corporate employee, or will the allure of running
her own show keep her right where she is? "I don't know
what's going to happen," says Guisewite. "Part of me
thinks I've been doing this for almost 21 years so I should
have figured out a way to plan ahead--but I don't seem to be
made that way. I don't know what's going to
happen."

What Guisewite does know, however, is the advice Cathy would
give to fellow homebased business owners: "Move the
office area out of the kitchen," she insists, "and get a
lock for the refrigerator."